GOLDogs

With the long-standing artificial selection made by humans to shape modern dog breeds, the canine model represents a unique mammalian model to decipher the genetic bases of various phenotypes (size, coat color, behaviour…), diseases or longevity. Indeed in dogs, the breed average lifespan is inversely correlated with breed average body weight, with smaller dogs living longer than larger dogs. In the GOLDogs project, we aim to produce the most exhaustive catalog of both small and large genetic variations in 25 dog breeds by combining low-pass sequencing of 500  known-aged dogs and long-read sequencing and genome assemblies of a large panel of dogs representing the main 25 breeds. This tremendous resource will not only be useful to study the genomic diversity of dog populations, but it will also provide a new strategy to map all forms of genetic variations to a phenotype of interest, with the fascinating example of longevity in dogs.